


Unfinished business

by aprilclash



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Shamanism, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 16:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13791381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprilclash/pseuds/aprilclash
Summary: Apparently, the only way to get Xu Minghao's attention is to be unmistakably, irreparably dead. Or Kim Mingyu.A college au in which Minghao can see ghosts, Mingyu is persistent and dramatic and Seokmin likes to meddle (and is also a shaman).





	Unfinished business

**Author's Note:**

> If you think I know what I'm doing with this fic you're absolutely wrong ;u;  
> (but I have at least 20k already written already and they even almost kiss at some point! sweet!)  
> (unbetaed, I'll add other tags when I update)  
> (Also thank you twitter user @ME0KSIN for convincing me to post this fic. I'll try to not let it fail, I promise >.<)

Mingyu hears the first bang coming from the room next door around midnight. He raises a quizzical eyebrow and hopes that the boy living in the room next to his is not shagging anyone at the moment, not because it would make him feel lonely but because it would be extremely distracting. He just managed to get rid of his own distracting roommate, at least for tonight, and he doesn’t need a distracting neighbor in his place.

The noise continues, rhythmic and regular, not strong enough to require a trip to the floor manager’s room but strong enough to bother Mingyu. 

The laptop in front of him buzzes quietly, its pale blue light too bright for his eyes. He’s been wanting to download one of those brightness control app for months, but he always forgets. He could also do it now, but he knows the moment he closes the document for a tiny break is the moment he gives up on this essay and the deadline is tomorrow. It’s Seungkwan’s deadline, not Mingyu’s, and it’s not like Seungkwan cares too much about this deadline either (if he really cared he would have written the essay himself instead of asking Mingyu) but he’s willing to pay double the usual amount if Mingyu has everything edited before tomorrow. And Mingyu is stripped for cash, so he shakes his head and starts reading everything again from the start, under his voice, looking for typos and grammar mistakes. 

He hears noises coming from the other side of the wall, dull bangs, thud, thud, _thud_. It’s annoying, but he pays it no mind. When he meets the occupant of room 508 he’ll make sure to tell him to be more discreet next time. Now that he thinks about it, Mingyu has never even seen the kid next door. He only knows, because Seungkwan knows everyone and everyone knows Seungkwan, that Seo Myungho is a nursing student and he’s Chinese. And that’s everything he needs to know.

The clock ticks slowly, too slowly for Mingyu’s liking, and the bangs coming from the other room too go on. Sometime around the third proof-checking reading, he dozes off. He’s woken up some time later, and quite abruptly, by a loud knock on the door.

He wipes dried saliva at the corner of his mouth and moves the mouse to make the dark wallpaper disappear from his screen, showing a, thankfully almost done, version of his document, and the time. It’s past two thirty am, too late for any casual visit. Not that any of his friends would visit him at this time of the night. Seungkwan is probably passed out on the floor in his room, surrounded by notes and reference material (he really needs to start working on his assignments in advance).

Wonwoo is sleeping. Because Wonwoo is the smartest person in their group of friends and he sleeps a human amount of hours every night unlike all his other friends. Seokmin is definitely sleeping too. Soonyoung? It could be Soonyoung. Maybe he returned from a gig drunk, he can’t remember his room code and he needs a place to crash.

The door rattles enough, with more urgency, and this time Mingyu gets up, feeling his joints crack from all the time he spent hunched on the desk to save Seungkwan’s ungrateful ass.

He doesn't check who it is before he opens the door. First big mistake. He should've checked, he should’ve really checked, because as soon as he opens the door he finds himself staring at the terrified face of one of the Chinese student from the nursing department, a student whom Mingyu has never talked to in his life.

“Hi,” he says, because his parents taught him to be polite. “Who are you?"

"Can I get inside?" asks the stranger, in a tight, airy voice, staring at him with pleading eyes. Mingyu stares back, appalled.

"Excuse me?"

"Can I get inside? With you?” The boy at least realize he’s asking something really strange because he bows and asks, in a scared, high pitched voice, “Please I’m terrified I’m dying I think there's someone in my room but there's literally no one in my room and something has pulled my leg as I slept and..."

“Who are you?"

"Xu Minghao, room 508."

Xu Minghao. It rings a bell for a moment before- Oh, sure Mingyu knows that name. Xu Minghao. Seo Myungho. For the past six weeks it was a tag hanging from the door of the room next to Mingyu's. Now it has a face, wide eyes, badly dyed hair, two pimples on his left cheek, cute pointed ears and...

The boy wastes no time. He pushes Mingyu inside, follows him and then closes the door, three turns of the key, before he slides against it with a broken, tired sigh.

Mingyu stares, still dumbfounded. "Did you just?"

"Please don't ask," is the reply, in slow, heavily accented Korean.

"Please don't ask? Of course I’m asking! You broke into my room..."

"You opened the door-"

"I didn't invite you though!"

Xu Minghao sighs. "At least you have the right attitude. Do not, and I repeat, _do not_ invite anyone inside your room. Ever. They can't get inside if you don't give them permission."

"Who?" explodes Mingyu, feeling frustrated and tired and still completely lost as to why this boy is inside his room. The insistent, loud thud coming from the other room surely doesn’t help.

"The ghosts, obviously."

Oh, well, that puts an end to any kind of protest Mingyu could've felt like doing. The boy in front of his is either crazy or drunk and in both cases arguing with him would be a waste of time and patience.

"Did you?" he just asks.

"What?"

"Invite them. Did you invite them? The ghosts," he says, because what can he do at this point? This Xu Minghao person looks completely terrified. Now that he looks at him better, he can see his knee shaking. Bad luck, says Mingyu’s grandma’s voice. A psychosis, thinks Mingyu. Maybe the boy was on meds and forgot to take them. He doesn't know, but at the moment it doesn't seem wise to contradict him.

Minghao looks at him for the longest moment, without blinking. Then he nods.

"I didn’t, but Hansol did." He lowers his eyes, but when he looks up again he's even more desperate. "I mean, I tried to stop them! We were kinda drunk and he had this ouija board and..."

"Wowowowow wait a minute. Hansol as in Choi Hansol? Vernon? Seungkwan's roommate?"

Minghao seems to calm down a little. "Yes, Seungkwan was there too. We were drinking and they insisted that it would be fun and..." He swallows and pulls at his hair, frustrated. “This is why I don’t drink, usually. I’ll never drink again. Now that crazy girl followed me home...”

Oh, now Mingyu understands. Minghao is probably sensitive to horror stories. Someone said a word too much and now he’s completely terrified out of his mind and he hears stuff. He needs someone to hold his hands and spend the night with him but Mingyu has no time to lose.

"Look, you know it's probably autosuggestion, right?"

"It's not!" screams Minghao, and Mingyu crawls back, away from the boy still lying on the ground, back to the door. The pounding seems to get louder, faster. “You can hear it, right? If I’m here, who’s banging on the wall?”

If Minghao is here… who… the wall…

It goes on, three times, the last three times. And then it stops.

There's silence, for a moment, heavy and awkward. The tiny light coming from the laptop still blink awkwardly, reminding Mingyu he has a job to finish. They make Minghao's presence inside his room look even more surreal.

Minghao closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to calm down. There’s nothing going on, it’s just time to ask Minghao to leave. He will do it. But, as Mingyu opens his mouth to form the words, the door shakes. Someone is knocking. At Mingyu's own door. One, two, three times.

Minghao whimpers and shakes like a leaf under a storm. He covers his mouth with both hands, trying to keep himself from crying out loud.

Mingyu’s heart is beating so hard he can’t hear anything else, but he’s a grown adult. He can handle this. He walks towards the door, careful not to step on his guest. "Who’s there?" he asks. The door rattles again, one, two and three knocks. "Who the fuck is there, if this is a prank..."

He stares through the peephole. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Then, without any warning, the door starts shaking, as if someone is trying to knock it down. The handle moves, left and right, and Minghao jumps to his feet and holds it still while Mingyu pushes against the door to keep it closed.

"Go away!" screams Mingyu, while Minghao yells something in Chinese. He doesn't know for how long they hold on, if one minute or an entire year. The invisible force pushing against the door disappears. Minghao slides back on the floor. Mingyu falls on his bed. They look at each other.

"Fuck," says Mingyu, "we might have a problem."

Xu Minghao laughs, tired and breathless and still fucking terrified.

"No shit, Sherlock."

 

~ ~ ~

 

When Mingyu wakes up splayed on the floor the following morning, the boy, Xu Minghao, has disappeared, Mingyu’s laptop has died and there are at least sixty-five messages bordering from angry to desperate, all from Seungkwan, asking where his essay is. Mingyu sends him the last copy he saved yesterday night and almost asks him if he knows a Seo Myungho. Or a Xu Minghao.

In the end, he feels too stupid to do it. The whole experience definitely feels like a bad dream. A vivid, extremely detailed dream. Well, who knows, Mingyu might have met the cute but terrified guy of yesterday night at school, in the alleys or in some class they shared, and then his face was randomly pulled out of Mingyu’s visual memory cauldron and put into the dream. 

His alarm clock rings again, to remind him that he promised to meet Seokmin in the cafeteria for lunch. He quickly changes into some clean clothes and takes his bag to go out. He stops at the door. The handle under his palm feels exactly like he felt in the dream. He can almost feel it shake.

What a strange dream, he thinks, finally opening the door and letting himself in the luminous corridor that leads to the elevator. Strange or not, it was just a dream. Cute, terrified strangers don’t barge into your room at fucking late o’clock in the morning to tell you a ghost is haunting them. Besides, ghosts don’t exist. Nor does destiny.

Except destiny exists, his name is Xu Minghao and he walks again in Mingyu’s life, like most things in Mingyu’s life happen, because Lee Seokmin likes to meddle.

“So, let me say it again because I’m not sure I’ve quite gotten the hang of it. You’re saying ghosts are real,” he says, slowly.

Seokmin nods excitedly. “Yes.”

“And your family business doesn’t revolve around scamming people.”

Seokmin’s smile morphs into a slight grimace and Mingyu stops him before he can start with the tirade about the role of shamans in today’s society he’s been giving Mingyu since they both were in kindergarten.

“Ok, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you dissing my mom, but yes.”

“And you’re saying I’m some kind of supernatural ward for ghosts, which also explains why your mom would never invite me over to your house but would always let you play at mine, I guess.”

“Kinda, yes.”

“It’s not that I believe you, my friend, it’s just that I really want to know where this will lead. What does your new friend have to do with this?”

Seokmin claps excitedly, as if Mingyu has just inadvertently fallen into his trap.

“You see, he has a problem with ghosts. If you’re a natural ward, he’s a natural magnet. He kinda… attracts them? And they’re really bothering him lately.”

“So what, should I start going out with him to keep the ghosts away? For real? This is the most ridiculous way to set me up with someone, Seokmin. Yes, even worse than that mess in third grade with the AP teacher-”

“In my defense, I must say I didn’t expect you to be so gullible. I mean, everyone would’ve realized it was a joke and...”

Mingyu waves his hands in front of Seokmin’s face.

“Can you stop? First, it’s embarrassing, second, that’s not my point! Third! I can’t believe you couldn’t think of a better excuse for dumping some random kid on me like this. I can’t believe he was desperate enough to let you do this... Does he think I’m that hot?”

Before Seokmin can answer, someone slams a couple of heavy medicine books on the table right next to Mingyu, and both he and Seokmin jumps on their chairs, startled.

“I think you’re barely passable, five plus plus out of ten… Well, six, minus, but only because you’re tall and I’m feeling generous.”

And… wow. Oh, wow. The textbook definition of love at first sight walks in Mingyu’s life just like that, swimming in a too large Yonsei University tee, a tacky pierced cap and the most spectacular set of dark circles Mingyu has ever seen. And a frown. A cute frown. But still, a hostile frown. A painfully familiar frown.

Then, Mingyu is painfully hit by three things. First, Seokmin not-subtly kicking him under the table, probably to warn him that this is his new friend, the one Mingyu is supposed to help. Too bad it’s late to keep Mingyu from embarrassing himself in front of his newfound crush. Thank you Seokmin, thanks for nothing.

Second, and it hurts more than Seokmin’s kick, the awareness of how badly Mingyu has screwed up if he’s being rejected even before he had the chance to realize he was in love. Where is the replay button? What? Something like that doesn’t exist in real life?

Third, and this is the worse out of the three, this is the same boy from yesterday night.

He gasps, open-mouthed, not really knowing what to say, and he can hear Seokmin, that traitor, laugh - it’s more like a bark - to the new boy, “Oh god, Myungho, I think you broke him!”

“It’s Minghao,” is the soft reply.

Minghao – Xu Minghao – sighs and shakes his head, and in full daylight Mingyu sees the most stupid things he failed to notice yesterday night in slow motion, like that he has a long neck, and his hair ends are all split and ruined by bad dye-jobs, and he has an earring at his left ear, somehow even more tacky than his pierced cap, and… and then he sits down next to Mingyu and – scratch the textbook definition of love at first sight, this Minghao dude is really hot and Mingyu is so _so_ screwed – and he stares at Mingyu, still annoyed but also a bit amused.

“You can close your mouth, you know?”

Seokmin laughs harder, louder, a full-body earthquake that almost drags him under the table. Meanwhile, a blush makes its way up Mingyu’s neck, uninvited, proudly red and barely concealed by the faint ghost of last summer’s tan. Minghao’s smirk widens imperceptibly and that’s when Mingyu realizes it’s enough. He’s Kim Mingyu and he’s immune to shame and embarrassment. His second name is fucking resilient and his third name is charm, so it’s time to be resilient and charming. He closes his mouth, he reopens it. He smiles, and he can see Minghao physically move away from him, back to suspicious mode.

“Yes, you broke me,” he says. “My heart is broken. A six? A six minus? You must be kidding me.”

Despite the tiredness, the boy’s eyes sparkle under his messy brown fringe. He tries to keep in his laughter and fails.

“You think you deserve more?”

“I only deserve one number.”

He can hear Seokmin cringe, “Gyu, pleas-”

“Yours.”

Seokmin groans, Minghao look at the both of them like they’re crazy.

“I thought yesterday night you were strange, but you’re even stranger this morning.”

“And you’re even cuter.”

“Well, ok, I’m leaving.”

Except he doesn’t. And that’s how it starts.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed leave me a comment or a kudo, or come and poke me on twitter @aprilclaws ♥  
> Thank you for reading~


End file.
